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Brian Molefe loses another appeal against paying back pension

Trade union Solidarity, a respondent in the matter, says Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed the review application with costs

24 April 2019 - 18:20 Genevieve Quintal

Brian Molefe. Picture: Russel Roberts

Disgraced former Eskom CEO Brian Molefe has lost his third appeal against an order forcing him to repay R11m in pension payments unlawfully paid to him by the power utility’s pension fund.

In 2018, Molefe approached the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Bloemfontein in a bid to overturn the ruling ordering him to repay the money. In October, the court dismissed his application with costs.

Following this Molefe lodged a special appeal with the judge president of the Supreme Court of Appeal.

Trade union Solidarity, which is one of the respondents in the matter, said the court dismissed this review application with costs.

In the SCA judgment, dated April 17, the court ordered that the application be dismissed because there was “no exceptional circumstances warranting reconsideration or variation of the decision refusing the application for leave to appeal have been established”.

In April 2018, the high court in Pretoria dismissed Molefe’s application for leave to appeal against a ruling that he pay back part of his “unlawful” pension payout and the costs for counsel in the legal battle.

The high court found he was unlawfully awarded a R30m early retirement pension benefit by the Eskom Pension and Provident Fund after his resignation from Eskom in 2016.

It also dismissed his application to be reinstated as CEO of Eskom, from which he claimed he had never resigned as the agreement that necessitated his departure from Eskom was dependent on his eligibility for early retirement.

Solidarity’s Deon Reyneke said the fact that Molefe’s applications to appeal had failed every time was proof that he had no chance of success. “Molefe is painting himself into a corner in an attempt to circumvent the law, and one can only hide behind court processes for so long,” he said.

When contacted on Wednesday Molefe said he was not aware of the court judgment and so did not want to comment.

Molefe is also facing an almost R80m lawsuit from Transnet. The freight and rail company is trying to recover money lost through dubious dealings and malfeasance, and is in the process of recovering more through lawsuits against former officials such as Siyabonga Gama and Molefe.